Thursday, May 14, 2015

Stumbling

The last thing I want to do right now is write an Unsugaring blog post, but I promised myself I would be honest about the highs and lows of my relationship with food. The last week has been a roller coaster when it comes to my recovery from my food compulsions. 

But I am still off sugar, thank goodness. 

I had this stretch, maybe four days, when I felt pretty neutral around food. I ate moderately, I mostly ate three meals a day with nothing in between. I was able to go out to eat and not fret over what to order. I ordered whatever sounded good to me--including a sausage and cheese omelet at one meal--and I had this abundant space in my head to dream big dreams and plan new projects. I also had tons of energy and was very joyous. 

Then, on the 10th, on my one month mark off sugar and without bingeing, I got on the scale. I'd gotten on the scale several times over the last month, but I wanted an accurate count of how much weight I'd lost. The first 4.5 pounds had come off in two days. I'd started at 164.3 and had hovered at 160.6 for a few weeks, but between the 1st and the 10th, I lost another four pounds. I felt thrilled. Which of course led to me calculating how long it would take me, at that rate, to get back down to a size 4. I have a closet full and drawers full of size 2, 4, and 6 clothes, all purchased during a brief spell when I worked super hard for the weight to come off and I worked out compulsively. It's summer and I'd like to wear those summer dresses again. 

The calculating led me back to the food. I haven't been binging, but I've been eating more than three times a day, and bigger and bigger portions. Tonight, I ended the day with a large buttered bowl of popcorn, in front of episodes of "Girls." 

I do think the scale is a trigger, even though I know it can be used by some people as a tool. But I honestly think that the normalcy around food I experienced for that short stretch of days freaked me out as well. I started taking up a lot of space in the world, initiating new bold projects. There's a voice inside me that says, How dare you. During my voice lesson, in which I sing, badly, Italian arias, my voice became bolder and brighter, and I could hear a real singer in there, someone unafraid and powerful. 

I'm afraid to take hold of my own power. Real normalcy around food--not obsessing or worrying or calculating or plotting--would be such an enormous change for me. Even when my eating was moderate in the past, it was because I was in a rigorous program which involved weighing and measuring every morsel I put into my mouth, as well as engaging as several other support tools on a daily basis. My whole day was set up around supporting not bingeing. 

I actually had days where I slept in, got up and went out to breakfast with a friend, had appointments, came home and made a quick and simple lunch, did some work, made phone calls, and ate a healthy dinner (by choice, and because the fridge was full of vegetables that needed to be eaten, not because I was trying to reduce my food intake). I do want that life, that simplicity, that lack of obsession. But even if something isn't serving me, even if it's threatening to destroy me (I've been depressed for the last few days, since I've been leaning on the food more), the familiarity is hard to give up. 

But every night I write in my journal, I am willing to change. I embrace change. 

So here it goes again tonight, a night in which I'm spiraling as part of a two day darkness and depression. Even if it sounds new age-y or silly, I'm looking at the new me in the face and saying, Let's do this. Let's let the food go, let's let the suffering go. Let's let the baggage go. 

I hope everyone else on this journey is doing well, is on an upswing and is not giving up when you fall. 

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